Not a blast Marty. We're with you.
Having worked with 'famous artists' (registered trademark goes here) who
hang in museums and have bookoo bucks it all comes down to an idea or a
vision and pursuing it. All real artists continue to try new things, seek
their own path, would make art with mud and sticks if nothing else was
available. The saddest guy in the world is the millionaire artist who hasn't
tried anything new in ten years.
Eugene Atget wandered around Paris streets using completely obsolete
technology making photographs that are cherished and will continue to be so.
Marvel a generation older than Atget using state of the art (for the 1860s)
technology made technically superior photographs to those Atget would begin
making years later. Yet his are historical records, Atget's are works of
art. H is hand is in every print, his passion in every mistake, scratch
chemical stain, blurry bit.
The only thing I can suggest is to make sure the pursuit of the widget
doesn't derail the persuit of the image. We male photographers are all too
easily seduced by the next wonder-widget.
Now if I only had that cheap zoom lens I could shoot a dull slide of a
squirrel in the park just like the one I saw in Popular Photography
magazine. . . .
But whether you are Rebecca Blake asking her assistant to adjust and focus
her camera to capture the image she has in her head or one of us guys
whittling a scrap of wood into a blackbox keep in mind what it is you are
trying to accomplish--and then stay open to being able to recognize what it
is that we have actually accomplished and build on that.
My proof sheets bore me to tears. My prints are even duller. Often even
after I have toned them they leave me wondering 'why am I doing this?' Often
it takes six months of walking past them every couple of days-ignoring them
to realize which are good and which not. And even then there is the next
step of learning from what I already know and applying to the next stage. IT
took me twenty years to realize I never did want to be Ansel Adams.
Here in Cameramakers we have the added situation where we often spend a day
or a week making some widget or alteration and then realizing it is no good.
Just part of the process.
Mistakes are rewards. Dead ends signposts to the new way. Failures
blessings. Success transitory and a warning to push on immediately.
Will
---William Nettles
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Nettles Photo / Imaging Site http://www.wgn.net/~nettles
Find out what's happening in Echo Park:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 12:07:09 -0600
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Cameramakers digest, Vol 1 #414 - 5 msgs
>
> I suppose I'll get flamed for this, but what the hell . . .
>
> You guys who make your own stuff do great things, but you should not look
> down your noses at other people who have to do things differently. There are
> lots of people who do not have the means to buy the tools necessary to do
> what you do, nor do they they have the time or the education or experience
> necessary. Someone who saves his pennies for a year from his miserable job
> shoveling elephant dung in a zoo to buy a 40 year old Ciroflex TLR has as
> much right to be proud of his photos as someone who built a Wisner lookalike.
>
> Blast away.
>
> Marty
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